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iSCSI NIC selection - best practice...
Hi,
I have two PE2950s connected to a dual controller MD3000i via two PC5424 switches.
I noticed now that I had selected the PEs' dual port *onboard* NIC for the iSCSI link.
Would it be wiser to use on of my two extra dual port PCI-x cards for iSCSI? If one of these fail, they are most certainly faster to replace than the PE's motherboard.. Or, to further increase redundancy should I use one port of each PCI-x card for iSCSI. Then if one PCI-x cards goes down I have still half of my iSCSI link pumping...
Comments on 'best practice' appreciated. This is my first virtual and external iSCSI setup...
regards
Tor
tommo666
1.2K Posts
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August 3rd, 2009 03:00
Yep better to use the 2 dual port cards. one port to each contoller so if a card fails you have the over card still connected to both controllers. Then you can team the onboard nics for a bit more bandwidth.
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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August 3rd, 2009 09:00
I would agree with tommo666 about using 2 different cards, however, make sure the 2 cards use the same driver (basically; make sure they are the same brand (Broadcom vs Intel)). This means the 2 iSCSI links don't have slightly different methods of handling certain IO traffic patterns.
So maybe use 2 Intel NICs (single, dual or quad port each (single port on the dual or quad port options)), or if you want to use one of the onboard NICs, add a Broadcom card that matches (or comes close to matching) the onboard chip.